The Heart of Avtandil
by Mertiya
Summary: Avtandil: a world with a fragmented heart, where five different factions worship five different witches. Into this world stumbles a dying planeswalker whose imminent demise could have serious consequences not just to the plane itself, but to the very fabric of the Multiverse.
1. Between Sunlight and Shadow

**A/N:** This fic is probably better read over at AO3, simply because there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY TO EMBED AN IMAGE ON FFNET. Sorry, rant over, moving on. This fic is hopefully going to be a collection of Uncharted Realms-style stories written as part of the custom set that I am (suuuuuuper slowly) working on. All the planeswalkers and characters in this particular fic are OCs (which is kind of a first for me, I very rarely write fanfiction rather than original fiction with OCs, but MtG is a good fandom for it). This does tie very loosely to the _Counterflux_ 'verse, as Iskra is a relatively major character to the storyline.

 **Between Sunlight and Shadow**

"In the morning, when _Sadra_ Efrosyni returned, she found the church deathly silent. Every cleric was dead, each one with two neat holes in their throat and drained entirely of blood. All because _someone_ fell asleep when he was supposed to be guarding the door."

Hyrios rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to fall asleep on vigil. And, while there may be many gruesome creatures out there, I've never heard tell of one that fed on human blood. Most monsters aren't that picky."

 _Brodros_ Photios grinned back. "I still think it's a good tale," he rumbled. "It certainly keeps the children indoors at night."

"Well, I am not a child." Hyrios, though he had been raised in the nearby village, had officially joined the Church of the Golden Hill only recently. He had spent the past five years in the company of one of the Silsing merchants, traveling from the deepwoods to the steam fields and even, on one memorable occasion, to the White Citadel itself. Seeing new places, learning new things—conning his way into the vast Enumian libraries in some of the elves' towering cities—that was a dream come true for the young scholar. It was only now that he had returned home, after a letter from his sisters telling him that tensions seemed to be brewing—not between the humans and their treefolk neighbors, but within the church itself.

Thus far, Hyrios had seen no sign of the tensions that she spoke of, but he was content to spend at least a few years working off the debt he felt he owed to the church that had practically raised him and his two siblings after their parents died in an accident. Though the past years had been eventful, there was something joyful about the slow calm existence he enjoyed here, although he would have preferred a larger selection of available books. He had already ready every volume in the tiny library and had begun, slowly, to pass the time by attempting to put his recent experiences down on paper.

"How's the book going?" Photios asked, as Hyrios settled himself against the sun-warmed stones of the large front archway of the church, preparing for the evening vigil.

"Slowly but surely." Hyrios smiled. "It's hard to see the best way to put it all together."

"Ah, you have surely seen many things that old Photios can't even dream of." Photios shook his head. "I'll be able to read it when you're done?"

"Of course. Though it may take me as many years to write it as it took to live it." He laughed a little self-deprecatingly.

"Well, that's all right. That's how I like my excitement. As vicarious as possible." Photios chuckled. "You'll be all right if I leave you to it?"

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Hyrios nodded. Of course, Photios had known him since he was a child, but it was still irritating that this was the first time the man had trusted him to stand vigil alone. Perhaps sensing how he felt, Photios held up his hands in surrender. "I'll go along, then."

"Thank Zolota," Hyrios muttered, but too quietly for Photios to hear him. As the older priest left, he settled back against the wall, watching the sun descend slowly across the sky. As its round, orange bottom touched the horizon, he saw Kiki skipping across the fields toward him.

"I brought you dinner!" she said cheerfully, only a little out of breath. "Just bread and cheese today, sorry. Georgia's escorting the Witchmother home, and you know how I am at cooking." Her sword rattled at her side, the belt at least a full size too large for her.

"I'll make sure to bring you nothing but bread and cheese on your own vigil next week," Hyrios needled his sister.

She pouted at him. " _You_ cook just fine," she said accusatorily. "It's not my fault it was this or burnt eggs."

"Maybe if you didn't spend the _whole_ day practicing with your sword in the fields," Hyrios said mildly. "But never mind. If some pumpkins attack the church, we'll be well-prepared."

"I am an exceptionally good swordswoman," Kiki said frostily, handing him the dinner basket. "You just don't appreciate it because you would cut off your own hand if you tried to wield one."

"The pen is mightier than the sword," Hyrios responded, brandishing his at her. A dot of ink landed on the bridge of her nose, and she squealed in surprise. Trying to rub it off, she only succeeded in smudging it.

"Take your damn dinner," she said, giving up after she'd rubbed ink across her cheek. "I'm going to go home and practice." She paused. "Actually, since you're on vigil, and I'll probably just go home and read…would you like to have it for tonight?" Her hand went to the sword at her side.

"It's just vigil," Hyrios said.

"I know, but it's technically your first one by yourself. I'd feel better if you had Obsidian. She'll take care of you."

"All right," Hyrios sighed. "As long as I don't have to actually draw her. Maybe she'll scare off any pumpkins that try to kill me."

Still, despite his confident words, despite the fact that he knew that these days standing vigil was about as dangerous as sitting in the library and reading—and he'd been in actual danger sometimes while traveling—Obsidian was a comfortable weight against his side.

Once Kiki had left, Hyrios ate his dinner quickly, then began the evening prayers. First, he lit the torches in their large sconces around the door, then the ornate lantern, heavy with oil, above it. Finally, as the sun dipped below the horizon, he lit the candles in a half circle and murmured the nightly prayer to Zolota and Avtandil. Silently, as he had done for several years now, he added prayers to Halashk, Lampyridae, Ruzai, and Aguin. He knew it wasn't exactly proper for an Obiru cleric to pray to the other witches, but, Hyrios thought wryly, it never hurt to have more entities on your side.

Then he sank into a cross-legged position in the front of the door and began to sit vigil.

* * *

It was dull and sleepy to sit vigil alone. The flickering candlelight, rather than being distracting, was soothing, and several times, Hyrios found himself having to pinch himself to stay awake. Once, he drowsed off and only woke because he knocked himself on the forehead with Obsidian's pommel. Fortunately, the pain and shock from actually falling asleep were enough to keep him awake from then on.

A little after two, according to the mark on the central candle, he heard the muffled clatter of a door, but as it was coming from within the church, he paid no attention. He was seated in front of the only way to enter the church from the outside, after all. Half an hour later, he heard what sounded like a short scream from somewhere behind and down.

Hyrios' brow furrowed. On the one hand, he definitely should not leave his vigil. And the noise had probably just been one of the novices either having a nightmare or stubbing their toe or something. On the other hand…

On the other hand, he had an ugly feeling in the pit of his stomach. Georgia had not returned with the Witchmother yet, and it wasn't that far down the Sweetwater to the Church of Golden Bones, which lay at the very edge of the Silsing. "Zolota, forgive me," Hyrios groaned, and he got to his feet, one hand seeking the pommel of the sword that Kiki had lent him.

The church was eerily quiet, and the shadows seemed longer than they ought to be. Hyrios paused at the novice dormitory to steal a candle and peer inside. Most of the beds were occupied, but Georgia's, of course, was empty. So were two others—Photios and a new young woman who had arrived a month or two ago from the Church of the Golden Bones were gone. Hyrios couldn't even remember her name, though he ought to know everyone by now.

Wishing he could call flame as some of his erstwhile traveling companions could, Hyrios paused for a precious moment to light the candle with flint and steel.

"Hyrios?" A small voice. Yeshim, the youngest of the novices, was sitting up in her bed. She was eight years old, an orphan like Hyrios, Georgia, and Kiki.

"Shhhh, go back to bed."

"I had nightmares. Can you get me some hot milk?"

"Not—right now, Yeshim. I'll come back in a little while, okay?"

"But I'm scared." Her voice was rising at the end. Hyrios gritted his teeth. He didn't have time for this.

With a sigh, he leaned over and woke another one of the novices. "Can you get Yeshim some hot milk? I have to go check on something."

"Hyrios? Aren't you on vigil?"

"Just—just get her some milk and get her back to sleep, all right?"

Another sound broke the eerie stillness, not a scream this time, but a rising shout. Yeshim flinched. Hyrios left the dormitory at a fast trot, his hand tightening on Obsidian's pommel.

The noises were coming from the stairs leading down into the basement. As he took the first steps down, Hyrios realized he could hear a low, rising chant coming from below. He raised the candle high, looking at the stairs. The prints of two feet showed clearly in the disturbed veneer of dust.

The chanting grew louder as he neared the bottom, and he could see that light was filtering out from beneath the door at the bottom, which Hyrios knew led to a storage room filled with old and mostly broken artifacts. In fact, it was where Kiki had found Obsidian several years ago. She had written him excitedly that the Witchmother had said she could take the old sword to practice with, as no one else had clearly used it for years and years.

Taking a deep breath, heart thumping, Hyrios put a hand on the door, then paused and blew out his own candle, waiting for a moment for his eyes to adjust a little. He pushed the door open.

The room was lit by hundreds of candles in neat concentric rings around the floor and melted to the walls, a hasty echo of the correct ritualistic invocation to Zolota, except that every single one of the candles was made of black wax. Georgia, eyes wide open and fixed on nothing, stood at the far end of the room, mouth open as she chanted something unintelligible. The light gilt covering had flaked off of it, or been scraped, and it was black with thin streaks of glittering gold. Seated in it, a wide, rictus-like grin drawn across her face, was the Witchmother. In the flickering candlelight, the shadows pooling beneath the chair seemed too black, writhing like living things toward the black stone slab in the center of the room.

Photios was bound to the slab, and the novice from the Church of the Golden Bones stood over him with a black knife. She was also chanting, but unlike the emptiness of Georgia's expression, there was a lurking glee glittering in her dark eyes.

Obsidian was in Hyrios' hand before he even realized it. "What in the witch's name—"

The knife came down before he could take another step, opening Photios' throat from side to side, an ugly dark gash in the weird golden light. Photios thrashed and gurgled, black blood spilling from the cut onto the black slab beneath. Hyrios' breath caught in his throat, and he found himself unable to move as he watched the fear rising and then draining from Photios' face, swift as the blood pouring onto the dark altar.

"What—what have you done?" he croaked after a moment, taking another step into the room. His stomach heaved, but he managed not to throw up.

The Witchmother giggled, a shrill noise that swiftly deepened as the shadows around her began to wrap around her and rise. "We will turn the witch's robe black with blood," she rasped.

"Oh, Zolota, too long you've been held back by the weakness of the outlying churches," moaned the girl whose name he still couldn't remember. "We will bring you to ascendancy over the other witches and their inferior creations."

Sheer anger boiled up inside Hyrios. He drew the sword out of its sheathe and took two steps forward, trying to run it directly through her. The sword went in easily enough, but caught on something, jarring his arm and making him stumble forward. "Georgia, wake up!" he shouted, and something cold and horrible touched his outstretched arm. The girl laughed.

"Not enough to kill me," she crooned. "Certainly not enough to kill _her_." Behind her, the Witchmother was rising. The shadows came with her, and she seemed to grow, the lower half of her body beginning to bloat into a swollen mass of darkness.

"Avtandil's heart," Hyrios breathed.

"We will make the splinters whole and rule them all!"

A hand, shadows dripping from it, reached out and seized Hyrios around the throat. He jerked and gasped as he was lifted off his feet, but managed to hold onto Obsidian and tugged at the hilt desperately, trying to free the sword for another attack. Wild laughter sounded in his ears again, and he was thrown backward, along with the sword. He hit something hard, then fell, leg crumpling beneath him as he landed awkwardly on the floor with a gasp of pain.

"But first," said the Witchmother, her voice deepened almost beyond recognition. "First, we will kill the heretics." Her madly skittering eyes fluttered upward to the ceiling. _Oh, Zolota, no._

"Georgia," Hyrios begged. "You have to get the novices out. Please. Listen to me." Gritting his teeth, he managed to call to mind one of the few spells he knew that might be useful, a quick chant he'd learned from an elemental to dispel magic. One hand on the wall, he tried to get to his feet, but pain flashed through his ankle, and it gave out. On the other side of the room, his sister's blank eyes flickered from him to Obsidian to the Witchmother. She gave a sudden, startled gasp, her own hand reaching to her side—but if she had had a sword, it was gone now.

"Georgia, _please_." Hyrios slumped back against the wall, frantically scanning the interior of the room. There had to be something around here that might help. He got onto his hands and knees just as Georgia shook her head again and bolted for the stairs. The Witchmother drew herself to her new full height, the top of her head brushing the ceiling, like a snake readying itself to strike.

Without thinking, Hyrios launched himself forward, driving Obsidian through the curtain of shadows at the base of the Witchmother's form. He jarred his arm again, but the sword went down and into the earthen floor, and the Witchmother fell at the base of the stairs, just below Georgia, who gasped and ran faster. The Witchmother turned, roaring with anger, and the novice reached down, tearing Hyrios' grip off of Obsidian and reaching for it herself. She shrieked with pain as she touched it, backing away. "What did you do?" she hissed, rounding on him.

Gasping, Hyrios didn't bother answering, instead rapidly scanning around the room again. Much of the old junk had been pushed to the sides, though some of it had been left in place beneath the black candles. Something large and oblong gleamed beneath the lantern light, and it niggled at the back of his mind, until he suddenly remembered the time he had been trapped behind the cave-in near the White Citadel, and the dwarves they had been with had blasted the passage open. It wasn't a magical artifact, it was just an explosive, neatly tucked just inches away from the nearest candle.

The fuse on such a device meant that it didn't explode instantaneously, but it would only have a delay of a few minutes or so. He didn't even know if a blast of that magnitude would be enough to kill the creature the Witchmother had become, and—he felt a twinge of pain run through his ankle—it was highly unlikely he would be able to outrun it. He shook his head. Never mind that. Would Georgia have enough time to get the novices out?

The Witchmother's helper grabbed his throat again, dragging him upright. "Take the sword out," she hissed, "or, by Avtandil, I will kill you where you stand."

Hyrios laughed weakly. "Then how would you free her?" he asked.

"Don't kill him," rumbled the Witchmother. "Hurt him." The novice slammed Hyrios into the wall, her nails digging into the flesh of his throat, and he gasped for breath. Just as spots began to swirl in front of his eyes, the pressure relaxed slightly, a tiny amount of air into his straining lungs, just enough to keep him conscious, before she pressed down again.

"Take the sword out," she said. "I can do this all night."

Hyrios shook his head weakly, wondering if he could get her to drop him. He still had his flint and steel, heavy weights in the pockets of his tunic. But how long? How long did he need to stall? How long _could_ he stall? The Witchmother roared and strained forward again, but Obsidian kept her anchored.

Pain shot through his arm again as the woman holding him twisted it. If she broke it, he wouldn't be able to light anything. "All right," he gasped. "I'll get the sword out. Put me down. Please."

She set him roughly on his feet, one hand still holding onto his arm, and guided him toward the sword. Meekly, he let her take him to it and bent over, putting both hands on the hilt. Taking a deep breath, he yanked Obsidian out of the earth and whirled around, slashing wildly. The girl cried out as the point scored along her face, and he turned back and drove it through the Witchmother once again before throwing himself to his hands and knees and scrambling across the room.

Miraculously, he reached the explosive without anyone stopping him, and even more miraculously, he managed to fumble his flint and steel out of his pocket and into his hands.

"What are you doing?" the girl shrilled, her voice suddenly high and laced with terror. "Is that a—"

How long? How long did he have? The flint and steel shuddered in his hands. If this was too early, he could kill all the novices. If it was too late, he could be killing himself and letting the Witchmother go unharmed, for all he knew. The Witchmother was turning towards him, understanding dawning in her wide, dark eyes. No other choice.

The flint scraped against the steel and a spark leapt from it, landed on the fuse, which ignited with a soft hissing noise. He kicked the bomb backwards as the Witchmother reached for him, hoping desperately the fuse wouldn't be snuffed out. There was a sudden, hard blow to his lower abdomen; he coughed, filling his mouth with the taste of copper, and stared down stupidly at the black shadow that had punched its way through his stomach. Blood was soaking through the front of his white tunic, forming a rapidly-widening stain around it.

"I will rip out your entrails," snarled the Witchmother.

"I'm not sure you have the time," Hyrios responded, then screamed as the shadow moved viciously inside him, choking and gasping against the pain. _Zolota, just make it stop_ , he begged, watching in horror as the writhing shadow pulled back, dragging something wet and bloody and—

The explosion was almost a relief.

* * *

Hyrios wept at the pain that pulled him back to consciousness. He gasped, but he could barely get any breath into his lungs. There was a little light on his face, and he could hear something dripping far away, but he couldn't move. There was an awful dull ache in his ribs, but at least the pain in his stomach was gone. Everything beneath his waist felt numb, disjointed, light.

It wasn't fair. He ought to be dead already, not trapped and slowly bleeding out beneath the rubble of the church. Wasn't that the least that the witches or the universe or someone could do for a hero?

"Ah, but, you see, we could do more." A feather-light touch brushed across his cheek, and warm breath ghosted across his ear. "Your sisters are praying for you, Hyrios. Pleading for your safe return. They did not see your entrails spilled across the floor, and they cannot see you trapped and dying here, or perhaps they would only pray for your swift death."

Hyrios closed his eyes. Was it Zolota speaking in his ear? She sounded cold, almost cruel.

"I am not my sister Aguin, nor my sister Halashk," Zolota answered. "I cannot feel as they do, but I will not abandon you, Hyrios. You have saved me from the obsidian mantle and the golden sword, and that is not the aspect that I prefer to take on."

"What?" Hyrios' voice sounded dusty and cracked, soft as a whisper that was all the air he could force into his compressed lungs.

The witch sighed. "I cannot ask you to decide like this; pain will do it for you," she said softly. There was a soft little noise like the birth of a spark, and then the world around him seemed to peel away, the compressing rubble and dark earth splitting back to reveal a soft white fog, and, at the horizon, a brilliant orange sun turning the whole area golden. Hyrios heaved in a breath and coughed in surprise at the relief.

"Temporary measures, I'm afraid," said Zolota, and now he could see her, a human woman half a head or so taller than he was. Her skin was as dark as the elementals who lived in Megiddo, but her eyes were faint gold, a sheen that was matched by the shimmering cloak around her shoulders. In one hand, she held a sword, black as ink, and it took Hyrios a long, surprised moment to identify it as Obsidian.

"I have more than one aspect, you know," she said, with a faintly amused smile. "If I stood in the Church of Golden Bones, I would look like this instead." For a moment, her form flickered: dark skin turned pale, gold eyes and cloak black, and the sword glowed with an unearthly light. "But then, I probably wouldn't be bothering with one single mortal if I wore the obsidian mantle in place of the gold. Not even a hero." She laughed lightly. "Well, hero Hyrios—you have a choice. I can let you die, swift and painless. Your sisters will find your body in a few nights—perhaps a week. They will mourn, and they will move on. Or—I can make it so you do not die for a very long time, but that—will not be painless."

"I don't want to die," Hyrios blurted before he'd had a chance to think, but the thoughts followed quickly. If he died, there was no one to tell the others what had happened to the Witchmother or warn them about the Church of the Golden Bones. Kiki and Georgia had been right when they called him home—it was clear that the church was splintering, and the consequences of the wrong faction coming out on top were horrific. He sucked in a pained breath at the thought of Photios' convulsing face as his blood drained away on the top of the altar. "I can't die," he said quietly. "I have to keep your mantle golden."

"I must say that I appreciate your dedication," Zolota responded. "But I will give you one more chance. Are you sure?"

He didn't want to be given the choice; it was worse than being forced to deal with whatever presented itself. But he couldn't ask, because if he asked about the pain, he might not be able to stick with his decision. Swallowing, trying not to remember what it had felt like, trapped and bleeding and dying, he nodded.

"Very well," murmured Zolota. "As your sisters have prayed and given me blood for your safety, I shall give you blood in return."

The world around him seemed to invert, his senses reeling, as he swung without moving from standing up to lying on his back. Above him, Zolota took to the sky on golden wings, her dark hair swirling out around her head. She drew the obsidian sword from its place at her side and slid it through her hand. Turning the hand over, she let Hyrios see the dark line of blood it had left across the palm, and then she held it up and squeezed her fist. Blood collected at the bottom and began drip in a thin stream downwards, landing in Hyrios' open mouth.

It didn't taste of copper the way his own had. Instead, it was almost honey-sweet, but it left a prickling, painful discomfort as it passed over his tongue that turned into the sharp bite of spiciness as he swallowed. Then it hit his stomach, and he tried to gasp, but he couldn't move his lungs any longer. Fiery heat followed by pain surged from his stomach outward into his veins, blood pounding in his ears. He felt his heart thud heavily once and then shiver to a halt, but the blood didn't stop moving. His muscles twisted and twitched, arching his back and snapping his head back, his limbs juddering out of his control like a puppet's. He tried to scream, but he couldn't, and then the fire in his blood was followed by pain splitting through the skin of his back and stomach, as if someone had taken a knife to him and was slowly tracing some kind of intricate pattern across his flesh with it.

 _Please,_ he begged, but he didn't know what he was begging for. A choked gurgle caught in his throat as his lungs hiccupped and froze, unmoving, the pain of suffocation flooding into his chest. Was all of this just a fever dream as he died?

Zolota's figure above him was blurring, behind the haze of liquid across his eyes. She seemed to be hovering near, however. "I may have tricked you a little," she murmured in his ear. "You're still going to die, but this way you'll at least come back."

He felt her fingers playing across his chest and stomach and legs and back—all at once. Then there was a snapping noise as one of the hands sank through the front of his chest. Hyrios tried to scream, but no sound came out, and he choked instead, copper rising in his mouth. He stared with horrified lucidity as her hand came up again, holding an unmoving lump of red. She brought to her mouth and blew on it; gold seemed to solidify over the surface. The scene seemed to freeze and ripple as it began to fade in one final burst of pain.

* * *

He was trapped in darkness again, but he wasn't numb any longer. Instead, every inch of his skin felt as if it was on fire. He moaned and coughed; something overhead shifted. "I found him—I think I _found_ him! He's _moving_!" It was Kiki's voice, high and almost childish in quality. "Come quickly!"

The darkness above him changed in quality, growing grey and then pale. Light broke through as the rubble above him was shifted. The sunlight was hardly better than the darkness; it prickled on his skin with the same burning sensation Zolota's blood had left inside him, and it pierced his head with pain through his eyes. He blinked and moaned, trying to cover his face with his hands.

"Hold still, we don't know how badly hurt you are," Georgia's voice said.

"I'm not hurt," Hyrios croaked. In agonizing pain, yes, but he didn't think he was hurt. Forcing himself to move, he managed to shift the rubble above him in tandem with whoever else was working.

It was almost like swimming, very painful swimming, through a remarkably solid substance, but eventually, he found the weight above him easing. Hands landed on his shoulders, helping him up into the dizzyingly bright sunlight. He stumbled forward and fell to his knees, his stomach turning over as he vomited bread and cheese mixed with dark red blood.

"Quick, get the healer," Georgia said to someone, and Hyrios lay and blinked at her.

"Are they safe?" he rasped. "The novices—are they—"

"They're fine," she said. "We had plenty of time—we ran—and then we heard the explosion. Zolota, I thought you—I thought—" She was trembling. "You must be in pain."

"Witches' breath, yes," he managed. "I am in so much pain right now."

"There's—blood all across your front. Are you still bleeding?"

The sun on his skin was too hot, a fire baking him inside and out, but he felt whole. Slowly, he pulled up the front of his tunic, which was stiff and sticky with half-dried blood. Beneath it, there was no fresh injury, but there was a ragged scar across the lower part of his abdomen that hadn't been there before, off which branched a raised red incision that went all the way up his sternum and nearly to his shoulder. "No," Hyrios said softly. "I—I'm not still bleeding."

But, he thought, in a strange, clinical way, he could smell blood, the copper tang heavy in his nostrils. Just looking up at Georgia, he could see the repeated pulse of the blood through her throat. He heard Kiki's voice; she and the healer were rapidly approaching.

"I—I need—" Hyrios choked out. He didn't know what he needed. He was cold and he needed warmth; too hot, and he needed something to cool him down.

Georgia reached out and put her arms around him, almost hesitantly. The three of them had often touched one another as reassurance, but somehow this was—different. Hyrios buried his face in the junction of her shoulder and tried not to smell the blood rushing and pulsing just beneath the skin. The scent was a weak echo of the taste of the witch's blood, but tantalizing all the same.

He shut his eyes, concentrating on Georgia's trembling hand in his hair. The witch had said it would be painful. But someone had to stop the golden mantle from turning black. And it looked as if it was up to him. There was a long road ahead of him, but at least, he thought tiredly, he did enjoy adventures.


	2. Nightmare's Call

**A/N:** In which we introduce our main character, and he fucks about.

 **Nightmare's Call**

"Run!"

"I am running!" Damian snapped. The stitch in his side had graduated from 'minor irritation' to 'blinding agony', and he was having trouble keeping up with his companion.

"Well, run faster!"

Sparing a moment to glare at the man at his side, Damian managed to gasp out, "Fuck you," then immediately regretted it.

"Watch your mouth," Benedikt retorted automatically, and Damian gave his shoulder a disbelieving look.

They skidded around a corner and found themselves staring at a blank wall. "Oh shit," said Damian. "Oh shit oh shit oh _shit_." He clutched at Benedikt, whose hand had dropped automatically to the knife at his belt. "We are gonna die, man." Was there time to planeswalk? It was kind of a shitty move to leave behind the guy who had paid him fifty percent in advance, but Damian was firmly of the opinion that being alive long enough to feel bad about that was worth it. Unfortunately, before he could even think about reaching for the Eternities, their pursuers rounded the corner and caught up.

Damian blanched as the thing that had been following them reared up, spreading its four main arms above the slick body like a starfish. Blue light glowed from suckers embedded in the flesh. Beside him, Benedikt muttered what sounded like a very tame curse, and he felt a tingling in the air as the arrester began to draw mana.

The creature attacked just as Benedikt's spell finished, and Damian dove behind him in terror. There was a slick, squishing noise, followed by a zap and a hiss. Damian smelled burned flesh and looked up to see that Benedikt had thrown up a wall of sparkling light between them and their attacker, which was jabbing at it with angry pseudopods. Each time it did, the wall shuddered and spat sparks from the impact. Benedikt's face was drawn and pale with the effort of keeping it in place.

"Not a bad effort," said a voice from behind the horror. The sound echoed hollowly in the stone undercity corridor. An unnaturally pale young woman stepped carefully around the starfish monstrosity. "But doomed, I think, to failure. Tell me, why did you intrude into a place that is no business of yours?"

"Got lost," Damian said, shivering with the effort of keeping his voice steady. "What's your excuse?"

"Oh, I don't think that's true," said the woman. "But I don't think your companion can keep that wall up for much longer, so I suppose I'll be able to find out. I think I'll let my pet here take your friend, and I'll have you."

Damian started to say something witty, and then her mouth opened, sharp, gleaming teeth bared, and the resulting wave of terror stopped the words in his throat. Vampire. Oh, fuck no. No. He wasn't doing this.

He felt the fire rising inside his chest, the fire he had fled from but that still lurked in wait for him, felt the dark compact awaken as he called on it. Somewhere, very far away, he imagined he could see the demon's smiling face, its ears pricking up as he tapped into the reserves of strength tied directly to his own life force. Flames burst from his hands, and he realized that the fire and the panic were rising too fast, that he couldn't possibly hope to control the power surging through his veins. He heard Benedikt yell in surprise as the flames blossomed outward in a black-red corona around him.

Breath seizing up in his lungs, Damian tried to hang on, but the shadows came next, and he could never control the shadows. They rose up from the locked space inside his head and burst from the darkness behind his eyes, and he could feel them, dimly, winding and twining forward. The white light of Benedikt's wall was the first to go, but beyond it, the shadows kept moving, burrowing through rock and flesh alike, as the flames burned and a roaring hum rose, blotting out everything else.

Damian swam slowly back to consciousness. There was a heavy weight on his chest, and his entire body felt bruised. Coughing, he discovered to his chagrin that his mouth was full of grit and the taste of blood. "Ah, fuck," he managed, blinking his eyes open. The blood-red light of the setting sun illuminated a rocky scree he recognized as being near the edge of Utvara, not too far away from where they'd gone into the undercity to begin with.

He heard a groan, and a little hillock of the rocks rose as Benedikt pulled himself out of the wreckage and sat back with a gasping breath. "Damn," he said. "You did not tell me you could do that."

Damian looked down. He was submerged in rocks up to his sternum. "I don't like doing it," he said. "Gonna die young enough as it is." He clawed ineffectually at the rocks for a few minutes. "Help me out here?"

"Oh. Of course," Benedikt responded, sounding a little dazed. He headed over and began to pry the worst of the debris away from Damian's chest. After a few minutes, the warlock was able to wriggle his way out and lie panting on the solid Ravnican ground. "Avacyn bless," he muttered automatically under his breath, the prayer too ingrained for him to forsake it, though he managed to slur the words into unrecognizability. After a moment or two of just breathing the fresh air, he found laughter shaking its way uncontrollably up his spine. Benedikt was gaping at him, but he couldn't stop.

"Fuck," Damian managed. "That was probably two or three years of my life I won't get back. But we're alive!" He grinned. "That calls for a celebration, don't you think?"

Benedikt blinked at him. "Well, I supp—" Damian flailed upright and kissed him. It lasted only a moment before his rubbery legs gave out and he fell back onto the pile of rubble, but he felt a shudder run through Benedikt's body, and the other man's hand reached out toward him. There was a moment of something bright and eager sparking between them, and then Benedikt looked away, firmly shoving his hands into his pockets. "Perhaps not that kind of celebration," he mumbled.

Damian felt the quivering tension leave the air in a rush, but tried to cover for himself. "Sorry, man," he shrugged, letting the easy laughter out to cover his disappointment. "We should go find an inn or somewhere to spend the night, though." _And I'm sure I can find someone from the Rakdos to fuck me._ His body was twitching and terrified, still, but wrung out and hollow, and he knew that if he tried to actually sleep, he would have screaming nightmares.

Benedikt didn't object, just put out a stiff hand and helped him to his feet. "Perhaps," he said, "next time you offer a potion to put the guards to sleep, you should test it to ensure it actually works."

"Well, next time you engage my services, _you_ should tell me we're likely to be dealing with undead," Damian responded testily.

* * *

Benedikt woke suddenly in the middle of the night, wondering what had woken him. If he'd managed to fall asleep through the moaning and banging from the adjacent suite, he wasn't sure why he would have been woken up by—silence? But there were no noises coming from the next room over anymore. Well, good. The walls were so damn thin, he could hear everything, and there were certain things he did not need to have heard. He turned over, drawing his pillow up over his head and his legs up to his chest and tried determinedly to get back to sleep.

It did not work. His mind kept producing the same image over and over, no matter how much he tried to ignore it: the sudden, sharp disappointment on Damian's face when he'd said no. Well, why shouldn't he? Who wanted to have sex with a grubby, miserly warlock who'd nearly gotten them killed with his cut-rate potions? Just because he'd ended up saving both of their lives—

 _I don't like doing it. Gonna die young enough as it is._ What had he meant by that? There had been a flash of something dark in his eyes. Benedikt couldn't remember much of what had happened in the undercity tunnel, but he had an image of Damian's slight form silhouetted against the red flames, head snapped back as if he couldn't control his limbs. There was something dark sprouting from his back, and the smoke and shadows had curled around his head in the shape of a pair of enormous horns.

 _I cannot have sex with that—that warlock!_ He wouldn't even know where to begin. Benedikt's experience in that area had been decidedly—limited—which was pretty clearly not true of Damian. Besides, there was the employer/employee relationship to maintain. Surely it wouldn't be professional to sleep with the person you'd paid money for help on your decidedly failed initial attempt at stealing a scroll. And that wasn't even beginning to touch on how inappropriate it was for an Azorius arrester to become involved in any way with a guildless without proper authorization.

The silence in the next room over was getting to him. Somehow, he'd thought Damian would be up all night with whatever person he had managed to coax into his bed. Surely it wouldn't hurt to just—take a look? Just in case something had happened. Sighing with frustration, he got out of bed, pulling on a cloak over the loose trousers he wore to sleep in, and made his way out of the room and over one.

As he'd feared, the door wasn't locked, and it opened silently to allow him access. He blinked against the candlelight spilling out of the door and looked inside, then promptly blushed.

The sheets and blanket lay in a tangled pile in the corner of the room, and Damian was stretched out naked on the bed. In the golden glow of the half-burned candle, his pale form looked reddish, but there were deeper red marks all down his sides, across his thighs and stomach, and an older puckered white scar beneath them. His dark hair flopped into his face, eyes shut, for all intents and purposes apparently asleep, but his arms were chained to the bed above his head. A half-empty bottle of ruby liquid sat abandoned on the nightstand.

Benedikt found himself leaning against the door. Whatever he'd been expecting to see—this wasn't it. Heat spiked in the base of his stomach as he stared at Damian's battered form, and he tried to tell himself it wasn't arousing. That he had certainly not felt the same sudden hot spike when Damian had kissed him earlier. That—oh, Krokt.

Benedikt's head bumped against the hand he was using to hold himself upright on the doorframe. There was an unmistakable hardness between his legs. He shook his head again. He should probably go over and check that Damian was all right, but the smell of sweat and sex in the room and the light rise and fall of the warlock's chest suggested that this was just the remains of whatever sexual encounter Benedikt had fallen asleep listening to. And he was aching.

Well, he reasoned, rather hazily, Damian had asked him to—to sleep with him. He didn't seem like the type of person who would mind if Benedikt just—quickly—he hadn't even finished the thought when he caught his left hand stealing downward inside his pants. Even more aroused than he'd realized, he had to bite his lip sharply to stop the moan that threatened to fall out. His sharp intake of breath echoed loudly in the still room.

"You can touch, you know."

Benedikt looked up in consternation. Damian's eyes were heavy-lidded with sleep, but open and gleaming as they regarded him from across the room.

"Um," he said, heat rising to his cheeks. "I. I should apologize for, uh."

He stopped. Damian was laughing. "I don't fuckin' care," he yawned. "If you really wanna jerk yourself instead of fucking me, that's fine, but you'll be missing out."

"Goddammit," Benedikt said explosively.

"Watch your language," Damian mocked, wriggling his hips a little, which sent another uncomfortable spike of arousal shooting through Benedikt's groin. He ground his teeth together against the noise that wanted to come out of his mouth.

His legs propelled him across the room before he could stop himself, and he found himself leaning down over Damian. "Are—you sure?" he asked breathlessly.

"Sure about what?" Confusion flickered briefly across the warlock's sleepy face.

"I can—touch you?" God. That sounded moronic.

Damian clearly thought so as well, because both eyebrows went up. "I fucked a Rakdos shred-freak a couple hours ago—well, more accurately, _she_ fucked _me_. I don't think you need to worry."

Benedikt knelt on the bed beside him. "Do you want me to get these off?" he asked, touching the chains lightly.

"Nah," Damian grinned. "Not till you're done, anyway. It'll be easier to sleep if you remember to take them off then, though."

Benedikt, who had been automatically reaching toward the chains, halted at Damian's words, shuddering as a wave of lust ran down his body. He shouldn't like _this_. But the irritating warlock, tied down in front of him. He could do _anything_ he wanted. The sense of power was dizzying, and he moaned again before he could stop himself.

"There's some stuff on the dresser," Damian waved one chained hand loosely. "I might still be slick enough, but no harm in adding more."

"You—actually want me to—" Benedikt said hoarsely, staring down. Damian's cock hadn't been hard before, but it was now, engorged with blood, his hips making little abortive motions upward as if he were trying to reach Benedikt.

Again the incredulous eyebrows. "Why _wouldn't_ I want you inside me?"

"I—earlier—I rejected you, and I haven't been particularly—"

Damian shrugged, eyes sliding away. "Doesn't matter, does it, man? C'mon, just fuck me. Assuming you really do want to."

"I—I do." His voice spat out the truth before his mind registered it, and he stooped and kissed Damian on the mouth, tipping the warlock's lips up to his. Blood and sweat and salt burst onto his tongue, and what he'd meant to be a short kiss turned longer and deepened. Damian moaned beneath him, hips surging up off the bed to thrust desperately against his stomach. Benedikt's free hand fell to the warlock's hip, cupping it gently, but sliding along so that he could feel the shape of it.

"Please," panted Damian, still trying to thrust upward. "Touch me or fuck me or just—god—anything. Fuck. _Please_."

"Yes, um. All right." Benedikt reached for the bottle on the nightstand that Damian had indicated earlier, then paused. "I, uh. I'm not exactly—I don't exactly—er."

Damian bit his lip and—damn him—wriggled again. "Most people are less experienced than I am," he drawled. "I don't give a fuck. It's not hard, just stick your cock in my ass."

"Well, actually," Benedikt responded, a little reassured. "I think you'll find it's quite hard." Damian's laughter almost took him by surprise, hips and legs jolting against Benedikt's, and Benedikt had to pause for a moment, overwhelmed at the sensation. Finally remembering what he was doing, he unscrewed the bottle, and, with shaking hands, spread the cold, slick liquid inside across his hands and his erection.

"Yeah, good," said Damian. "Probably could just stick it in, though, don't think you'll need to—gnnnf—" Benedikt, unable to stop himself, had slid a curious finger inside the warlock and crooked it. "Ah, god, yeah, fuck, yeah, keep doing that." The warlock's voice trailed off into a desperate whine, his hips jerking against Benedikt's hand.

The candle was burning low, beginning to gutter. In the soft half-shadows, his head thrown back against the headboard, hands straining against the cuffs, Damian looked almost otherworldly. Benedikt kissed his throat and down his stomach, pausing as he reached the short, dark trail of hair leading toward his cock. The warlock's breathing was rough in his ears. "Please fuck me, please fuck me, gods, please," Damian chanted, voice rising high and desperate. "C'mon, Benedikt, please, fuck, I'll do whatever you want, I'll suck you, I'll brew you a potion, I'll—" his voice broke, words slurring into incoherence.

"All right," Benedikt said, drawing a deep, steadying breath. It was less helpful than he'd hoped; the air was thick with the scent of sweat and the sweet-stale odor that hung around the Rakdos clubs. He withdrew his hand and kicked off his trousers, then tried to line up with Damian's hips. The angle was awkward, and he couldn't manage it. Trying to hold Damian still was useless; the warlock's writhing hips slid and slipped beneath his greasy hands. "You have to stop moving so much," he said. "And tip your hips up."

A tight, desperate nod. The hips stopped moving, though they still quivered in anticipation. Damian spread his legs apart, arcing his back off the bed, and Benedikt took the bottoms of his thighs gently, tilting them upward. Better. He could see what he was doing now, still in the dim, flickering light of the dying candle. Taking one last, deep breath, managing not to choke on the thick air, he thrust.

He gasped, and Damian cried out, rough and hoarse. For a long moment, Benedikt moved slowly inside him, feeling the heat of him and the slickness of the grease, soft noises falling from his throat, a strange, soft, slow union. Then Damian's hips moved greedily back against him, and it wasn't slow anymore, not at all. Benedikt thrust desperately, silent except for an occasional soft moan, but Damian more than made up for it, muttering a constant string of obscenities beneath his breath. Perhaps it was the guttering candle, but the shadows seemed to ripple along his form, pooling darkly in the hollow of his sternum, delineating his cheekbones, and heightening the dark smudges underneath his screwed-up eyes. He was really quite beautiful, Benedikt thought, with some surprise.

"You're stopping, don't stop," Damian begged, eyes half-opening into slits to regard him.

"Sorry," gasped Benedikt, moving again. His eyes slid shut as the world narrowed to just this, to Damian's heat around him and the smell of sweat and the twitching, quivering tension in the muscles of the man beneath him. "Ah—Damian—I think I'm going to—"

"Mmmm, go ahead." Benedikt opened his eyes to check, and saw that Damian's eyes were still open, watching him avidly. The warlock's tongue flicked out briefly across his bottom lip, and that was too much—Benedikt gasped and climaxed with a sudden shout, curling forward across Damian's body as the white heat surged across him. After a long moment, he slumped forward, the muscles in his arms no longer capable of supporting him. "Ah, fuck," Damian said from underneath him. "Undo the chains? I can't get myself off if you don't."

Benedikt looked up. "Er," he said. "I thought that was _my_ job."

A flicker of surprise ran across Damian's face, but he recovered quickly. "You seemed tired," he said, with a rapid shrug. "If—if you don't mind, I'm not gonna say no."

"Well, then," Benedikt smiled. He turned his head and kissed Damian's inner thigh, slid his lips down along it. The warlock gave a sharp hissing intake of breath, and Benedikt's head bobbed up for a moment.

"Wait, are you—" Damian started, and then Benedikt closed his lips around Damian's erection. The words dissolved into a low moan. Admittedly, he wasn't entirely sure what he was doing, but it couldn't be that difficult, could it? A substantial proportion of the population seemed to manage all right. Damian made a strangled noise, straining upward, and the top of his cock hit Benedikt's soft palate. The Azorius mage gagged, pulling back, trying to stop his stomach from rebelling.

"S-sorry," Damian managed. "Fucking hell, man. Warn me next time."

"Apologies," Benedikt said, ducking back down. This time he held the base of the shaft in one hand to prevent it from going too far into his mouth as he went back to what he had been doing.

"Gnnngh," Damian said intelligibly, then managed to form words again. "Little slower—you can use your tongue or your teeth if you fuckin' want—yeah—ah, shit, yeah—suck on it like—liiiiiike that yes exactly like that oh fuck yes." His hips twitched upward again, and Benedikt held him down as he pulled lips and tongue along the erection in front of him. Damian made a noise like a sob. "Ahhhh that's good, I'm close, I'm close I'm—" One heel tapped frantically at Benedikt's back, but he didn't realize what Damian was trying to say until the warlock's hips twisted up off the bed and bitter salt burst across his tongue. Benedikt gagged at the taste and pulled back, coughing and sputtering. Wiping off his face with his arm, he watched as Damian's legs twisted frantically together and he finally slumped back onto the bed. "Shit," he mumbled in a voice that sounded suddenly dull with exhaustion. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Benedikt said uncertainly. _Do you sell potions of cure disease_ might not be the most tactful thing to ask right now, and he was vaguely ashamed that it was the first thought that came to mind. He could take care of it tomorrow, in any case. "Let me get your arms free," he said quietly. "Where's the key?"

"Uh."

Benedikt put a hand to his forehead. "Really?"

"You can just leave them, it's not a big deal."

"I am not leaving you like that all night. Just a minute." He pulled his pants back on and hurried back to his own room, where he found a round, metal object he had tucked away carefully beneath the bed. It warmed in his palm as he retrieved it, and after getting back into the other room, he blew on it.

"What the fuck is that?" demanded Damian, as it extruded six small legs from the round main body and trundled hesitantly along the top of the bed over to the cuffs.

"It's something I enchanted recently. Shut up and be glad I had it with me." The automaton made a soft clicking chirp, then rubbed its forearms together with a scritching sound and applied itself to the handcuffs. They popped open a minute later, and the creature made a small motion like a stretch, pulled all its limbs back into its main form, and was quiescent once more. Benedikt picked it up gently and stowed it safely in the drawer of the night-stand. Groaning, Damian collapsed onto the bed, rubbing his wrists, which were bruised and lacerated.

"What the hell," said Benedikt. "Those were—"

"What?" said Damian. "What she had with her. It worked, didn't it? I'll be fine."  
"You idiot," Benedikt said, shaking his head. "I don't know how you've survived this lo—" He bit his tongue, wondering if he'd said something wrong, but Damian just laughed.

"A lot of luck, I guess," he said with a yawn. Benedikt shook his head again, then climbed into the bed.

"Move over," he said. After a slight pause, Damian did so. "Unless you don't want me here?" Benedikt asked, suddenly concerned, but Damian reached out mutely and took his hand.

"Um, no. Thanks. Stay," he said quietly.

* * *

 _As Damian pushed himself back against the altar, the flames licked higher, the choking smoke obscuring his vision. He coughed desperately, eyes watering, maybe from the smoke, maybe from—_

Oh, Avacyn _. The mantra repeated in his head, even though he didn't care much for the angel. He had loved Marlis more than he'd ever loved anyone. Even dying because of her, he couldn't quite stop himself from wanting to waken in his lover's arms. Stupid, he thought vaguely. Stupid, it was that emotion that had condemned him to death. The flames licked nearer, and he—_

-woke with a sob and a gasp, alone in his bed. As usual, his first instinct was to reach for one of the bottles he kept on his nightstand, and he cursed when he remembered that he was still on Ravnica, that all his comforting tonics and potions were a long, weary planeswalk away.

He slung his legs over the side of his bed and put his head in his hands, trying to calm his breathing. "Gods be damned," he breathed. "Gods be—" He shivered, the expression an uncomfortably appropriate one. He stretched, and his eye fell on a scribbled note lying on the other pillow.

 _Damian,_

 _I had a nice evening. Please feel free to stop by New Prahv the next time you are in the area. I may have other work for you._

 _Benedikt_

Damian's fee had been neatly pinned to the top. He was relatively sure that Benedikt hadn't meant to imply he was paying him for sex, but he shook his head and snickered anyway. He had to admit, he wouldn't really have expected to have decent sex with an Azorius arrester, and he'd been pleasantly surprised.

Crumpling the note, he shoved it into his pocket. At least the arrester had stayed until he was sleeping—a kindness Damian hadn't expected or looked for. Still, it was time to go home. Ravnica was a fine plane, but he needed to get back to his potion shop on Fiora before his brain exploded. Should've brought more ingredients with him. He just hadn't wanted to admit that he was getting to the point where he couldn't keep functioning without them, hadn't wanted to think about what that meant for his longevity.

Another long shudder ran down his spine, and he reached for the Eternities, in the hopes that their cold-hot paradox would drive the thoughts out of his head.


End file.
